JANUARY 19, 2007

Lenovo and Williams

Photographs of a Williams decked out with Lenovo livery have created a great deal of speculation that the Grove team may have signed a major sponsorship with the Chinese computer computer - which is the third biggest computer manufacturer in the world, following its 2005 acquisition of IBM's PC Division.

Originally set up in Beijing, the company moved headquarters to Hong Kong in 1988 and, since the IBM deals, is now based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The problem is that despite a lack of obvious branding on the cars at the moment Williams already has a title sponsorship with AT&T. The team has been very clever in recent years in securing sponsorship without putting too much on the cars and it is significant that AT&T currently has very little space. There is plenty of room available as the team has lost Budweiser and FedEx but has retained RBS, Allianz, Petrobras, Reuters, Oris, Philips, Tata and Randstad.

The team is currently refusing to comment on the pictures but it seems like Lenovo was either being pitched by the team or a deal has been done and different branding was being tried to see how it worked on TV.